The author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, Krakatoa, and A Crack in the Edge of the World, Simon Winchester is also a frequent contributor to such magazines as Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian Magazine, and National Geographic. In this 2009 collection he offers his pick of the previous year's best travel writing, "a perfect mix of exotic locale and elegant prose" (Publishers Weekly), "full of insights, humor, the exotic and distant, and the ordinary and near" (Library Journal). Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For this title, as for each of the others, a series editor reviews hundreds of periodicals, then selects between 50 and 100 outstanding works. The guest editor—a recognized expert in the field—then pares the list down to the 20 or so very best pieces.